Alt participated in Adoptidee once again this year, after the success of last year’s event. In this article, we’ll take you through the challenge we prepared for the children and the incredible ideas their creative minds came up with.
What is Adoptidee?
Adoptidee is a foundation that has been connecting education and business for several years now. It’s a fun initiative that brings together primary school children from grades 4, 5, and 6 with tech, IT, and other professional companies in the northern Netherlands. The goal is to give kids a playful, business-oriented challenge that sparks their creative thinking and perhaps even inspires future career paths in these fields. It’s also a great way for them to discover the different kinds of companies in their own local region.
After our positive experience last year, we were eager to sign up again, especially since we were matched with the same school.
Our research proposal
This year, we gave the children a brand-new challenge, directly inspired by something we’ve been working on ourselves:
How could you design a video game that helps children aged 3 to 8 learn to use a computer mouse?
This ties into an internship project we’re currently working on with Sonia, who’s exploring this exact topic (more on her work in a future article!). While the children participating in Adoptidee are older than the game’s target audience, we thought it would be interesting to get their perspective on what makes a game fun, educational, and intuitive for younger users.
At first, we wondered whether this might be a bit too tricky, but we were amazed by their creativity and insight!
After introducing the challenge and showing them some examples, the children got to work in teams, brainstorming and designing their own video game concepts. The aim was to generate as many different ideas as possible, while encouraging teamwork and collaboration.
Final presentations
During the final presentations at Martini Plaza on May 21st, we were blown away by what they delivered. The children didn’t just talk about their game concepts; they built physical models to present their level and game design. These visual and crafty designs helped them explain gameplay mechanics and features in ways we hadn’t even considered.
One group presented a concept that included a shop where players could buy skins to customize their character. Another team created a more gameplay-driven idea: a snake-like game in which players collect items and avoid obstacles. These were concepts that felt close to being ready for actual development.
The Alt team was truly impressed by the children’s work, and we’re incredibly proud of what they achieved. We’ll be taking their ideas into account as we continue developing our own video game project.
More about our Kids Mouse game?
Stay tuned for our next article, where Sonia—our game design and development intern—will share more about the game she’s building and how the children’s concepts are influencing her work.
